Who this site is for

www.restms.org is a tool for anyone interested in this domain to extend, improve, or build on RestMS. It is meant to be transparent, easy to use, fast, simple. This site is a way for people to work together to make specifications.

Consensus, not authority

COSS - the consensus-oriented specification system is explained here. This is a specification for how we collaborate on this site.

How this site works

The site is open to anyone who accepts the intellectual property policy. There is a minimum of formality. Anyone can contribute ideas and specifications. Every contributor keeps their copyrights but grants a license to everyone else, under the GPLv3. Specifications are considered to be "source code".

We don't use formal reviews. Each spec has one editor, who makes all changes and defines the spec's status (raw, draft, stable, etc.)

Discussion happens informally via email, wiki, irc, or comments on the site. Contributors can work in public or in private as they like. Most discussion happens on the mailing list.

We use forking to rejuvenate old specs, change editors, or resolve conflict over design choices. Forking means taking an existing spec text, and creating a new instance. Unlike most standards projects, we like being able to fork.